Monday, June 30, 2014

Rally for Ally

Some folks from Shiloh Church participated in, and the congregation co-sponsored, a very important community event this past weekend. It was called the "Rally for Ally." It was held at T.J. Chumps, in Englewood.

The Rally for Ally began with 70 participants in a morning run/walk, breakfast, a bike poker ride in the afternoon, featuring more then 70 riders, and a dinner, raffle and entertainment in the evening. Shiloh provided chairs for the event and the use of the small sound system. We also provided the blessing before the poker run and simply helped out throughout the event.

Rally for Ally supports families whose children are suffering from cancer. Ally is a survivor. Other survivors and sufferers were present and participating in the day's events. The several thousand dollars of funds raised will be utilized through a not-for-profit organization, called We Fight Together, to assist families at Children's Hospital, here in Dayton, whose children have been diagnosed with cancer and who are being treated at Children's. Each family will receive a care bag upon arrival at the hospital. The bags contain more than $150 of direct discount and assistance around and within the hospital. Since most families travel hastily to Children's such support is vital to their care. We fight Together and Rally for Ally are important support ministries within the local Dayton community. I hope you will each find a way to support the effort.

I began setting up the sound system at about 10:00 a.m., outside on a very humid morning. I was sweating quite profusely by the time one of the bikers' who had arrived early for the poker run, asked me if I might need some assistance. I said that I would appreciate his help. We laughed and joked through the remainder of the set up. Afterward, he offered to buy me a beverage. I agreed and we sat, talking, at a table on the patio at T.J. Chumps.

He assumed that I was a d.j. of sorts. We talked about the sound system and how nice it was to have a portable unit. We talked about poker rides and the nature of local fund raising. Less than an hour after our conversation, a few announcements were made. I was then introduced to conduct the blessing of the ride. The gentleman with whom I had sat and shared both beverage and conversation looked quizzically at me from the crowd. Immediately after the blessing, he came up to me and apologized. He did not know that I was a "preacher," he said, and that he was embarrassed by some of his language and by "making" me drink a beer.

Those who know me know that it is not hard work to get me to drink a beer. You likely also know that I am not particularly shocked by any form of language, unless it demonstrates outright prejudice or is unkind.

This gentleman and I then had a conversation about the church's involvement in community fund-raising and social/secular events. His assumption, and he admitted it, was that the church did things only for itself, and that it raised funds only for its own purposes. The church, he said, did not tend to pitch in with other events and help people in the community. (He put that rather more colorfully, but I think that is, in essence, what he meant.)

I told him about Shiloh. I explained that we are a church that sees itself "Living the Word by Serving the World." I even pointed out the church logo, that appeared on the shirts and literature for the event. I told him that we invest our time, talent, treasure and energy in the community, to enhance the lives of those who are in need.

The ride started a few minutes later and he took off on his Harley with the rest of the riders. I hope that our conversation and our brief work together changed his mind about the role of the church in the community. I hope that involvement in events like Rally for Ally, and continued support of organizations like We Fight Together, continue to teach the community about a different kind of church, one that they can again get behind and support.

I know that my new biker friend learned something about us through the event. I hope that we can continue to express a different kind of faith to, within and through our community, that we may, someday, see a resurgence of the church's ministry and service.
 
  

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Paying the Price of Being Nice

The United Church of Christ Statement of Faith reads, in part:

 "God calls us into the Church to accept the cost of joy of discipleship, to be God's servants in the service of others, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ's baptism and to eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory."

As much as I want to amend the statement to claim that we share in God's call to both discipleship and apostleship, I want to highlight just a portion of this Statement of Faith (Doxological form). I want to underline the notion that, while both discipleship and apostleship involve the joys of faithful ministry and service, those acts necessarily come with costs. We join Christ in both his passion and his victory.

This is contrary to the wishes of many in our congregations, who seemingly want to celebrate the victory of faithfulness without having first suffered the passion. Many seek the joy without the cost.

Put differently, there is a price for being nice. It seems infantile, really, to have to be teaching simple lessons of being nice, of going out of our way for others, of doing what it takes, in every aspect of our personal and communal lives, to exercise fundamental respect and honor.

Perhaps we tend to compartmentalize. Perhaps we have been led to believe that it is appropriate for us in certain, convenient settings, to act from the fundamentals of our faith, but it is not required of us when we are pursuing leisure or in the course of our daily routine. We have been taught that there are times to be nice. There are circumstances in which it is right for us to act kindly. In other circumstances, and at other times, we don't have to do that.

I am dumbfounded when I witness otherwise good people engaging in intentional acts of rejection, exclusion or isolation of those whom they do not particularly like. Being nice is off the table when we reject, exclude or isolate.

There is a difference, of course, between being nice and being polite. Being polite can be accomplished superficially or inauthentically. We can fake it. We can smile and say kind things, even when we do not honestly intend them. Being nice is on a completely different level. It cannot be faked. Being nice requires something of us in a situation that might otherwise result in exclusion, rejection or isolation. It costs us something for the sake of those whom we may include, accept or embrace.

The Church, at its best, is a training ground for those who would be nice in the name of Jesus Christ. It is a place where we learn by watching our founder practicing beyond politeness. It is a place where we join together, supporting one another in the cost of our apostleship, praying for one another's strength and witness. It is a place where we accept, embrace, and include those who may differ from us, because we are called to be nice.

Everything that gets in the way of the Church being a place that practices being nice should be stopped. Everything that promotes the Church being a place that practices being nice should be pursued. (By the way, I happen to believe that this is the case for every religion...that, at it's core, we are taught to go out of our way to be nice.)

So, be nice. Pay the price. Accept the cost of apostleship, in order that others may know its joy.          

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Creation and Creator

I was always taught that there was a wide gap between God, as Creator, and humanity, as creation. God is holy, I was told, while humanity was essentially sinful, flawed, limited and unworthy. It was therefore the grace of God, and that alone, which bridged the gap between unworthy humanity and sacred divinity. It was God who bent to the weakness of undeserving humankind, mainly because humans are unable to ascend the heights of divine status.

That picture of the relationship between God and God's creation served as a core understanding for a very long time. It rested as a foundational assumption under much of my theological development. God was Creator and humanity was creation, and never the twain shall meet.

The time has come, however, for me to accept a different relationship between God and humankind. This new relationship is based on intimacy and involvement instead of passivity or design of some divine plan or fate. This new relationship rejects the notion that God is "above" or "other." It demands that we see God as within and through, around and among, between and across.

The God of divine status, far above human nature, suggests that we consider a God that, like humans, thinks, acts, judges and emotes. This is a God who wills. But what if God is different than we have thought? What if God is spiritual energy that inhabits neither time nor space? What if God is throughout instead of above? What if all life can be defined as the presence of this divine spiritual energy and death is simply its absence? What if every person, in fact every living thing, deserves divine status, simply by virtue of being a bearer of God's spiritual energy?

If God's spiritual energy is throughout all living things, then all living things are essentially worthy, capable, deserving and radically equal. There is no gap between divinity and humanity. There is instead a unity of all things in the divinity of all life.

Years ago, when I rejected for myself the notion of God as an old man who sat on a throne, high above, and acted capriciously in the course of human history, I discovered the need for an alternative picture of what and who God might be. I unlearned my metaphysical divinity and began looking for an existential God, one who truly impacts human history. I could imagine a God which acted within the course of human affairs instead of above and over them. I began to draw the portrait of a divinity that was in Christ the same way that the same divinity is within us.

From the standpoint of an alternative foundational assumption about God, a whole new theology takes shape. This theology is based on the divine abilities that are part and parcel of human essential nature. By virtue of being alive, after all, humans bear the divine spiritual energy. Each one is worthy of attention, integrity, respect, care and concern. All life is deserving. All life is divine spiritual energy.

So, perhaps there is a gap between divinity and humanity, but the gap rests in its application instead of its essential nature. I relate much better to this divinity. It is much closer, more intimate, more directly applicable to the human endeavor, if we see ourselves as bearers of divine spiritual energy.

 

Monday, June 09, 2014

The Purpose-Driven Church

What if organizations in the life of the church were to organize themselves around a stated purpose, one that distinguishes them from social and fraternal organizations? What would that mean, and what would it look like? It would mean, I think, that every group within the life of the church would be aimed at embodying the will of God in Christ in whatever the groups do.

The church today must acknowledge that, because of trends that were established long ago, there are groups and organizations within our churches that are aimed exclusively at the interests, entertainment and pleasure of those who are a part of them. The purpose of such organizations is to protect the activities, interests and preferences of the group. Change things and current membership will be alienated from a group that has long been important to them.

How do churches help groups that have been guided by personal and group preference to become more closely associated with the purpose of the church of which these groups are a part? How do churches help their groups be involved in the ministry of Christ, which is necessarily directed outwardly, instead of serving themselves?

Over the past ten years or so, I have developed a workshop that is intended to assist groups within the Church of Jesus Christ. It is entitled "The Purpose Driven Organization." The intent of the workshop is to assist churches and other organizations to ensure that every body within the larger institution is working toward the same goals. Since I work primarily with Christian churches, the intent is more direct. Churches have a responsibility to assist groups and organizations within them to be faithful to the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ, even if groups and organizations won't necessarily appreciate the effort. The purpose of every group and organization within the Church of Jesus Christ must be the ministry and mission of Christ.

I am painfully aware that this concept flies directly in the face of what many members of these groups and organizations have been taught. I am fully cognizant of the fact that a purpose-driven organization within the church suggests a path other than the self-service that had been pursued in the social gospel approaches of the 70's and 80's, and even the small group approaches of the 90's and early 2000's. This is about embodying the work of Christ Jesus, not about making people socially or logistically comfortable. It is not about entertaining ourselves, but about serving Christ by serving others.

Churches will encounter opposition to the notion that everything that they do can be Christ-centered and Christ-purposed. Ironic, isn't it? Congregations have to struggle with groups within them to ensure that Christ is served in everything that they do. As the spiritual evolution progresses, moving toward a more authentic Christian purpose for the Church, it will be increasingly difficult for those who have been grounded in former articulations of the Church.

Let's keep our eyes on the ball! Keep moving toward that evolutionary step. Keep becoming the purpose-driven church!

Monday, June 02, 2014

Drawing Portraits of God

I was a young teen by the time that I had begun to suspect that something was wrong with the traditional portrait of God that I was being shown. The picture drawn for me was of a God who lurked, unseen and unheard, in wait of wrongdoing. When sinfulness was discovered, this angry, wrathful God would pounce, like a lion in the night, and express righteous rage for the unknowing sinner, tearing the sinner limb from limb. Worse, I was told that God would condemn wrongdoers to hell...forever. Eternal suffering was the fate of all who failed to accept God and do the "right things."

This was a God of condemnation. It was a God of wrath and fear and anger. This was a God who distrusted God's own children, who controlled them and manipulated them with threat of severe and eternal punishment. This was the "Tough Love" God whom I grew to despise. I hid from this God. I distrusted this God's will and certainly rejected this God's people. What good, I wondered, came out of following such a God?

As a teen, I rejected the very notion of deity, since the only portrait that I had been shown was one of condemnation, anger, violence and eternal damnation. Along with rejecting the notion of deity, I necessarily rejected church. I could not be active in a church that taught a deity that I refused to accept or acknowledge. If the church wanted me to believe, then it would have to draw for me a different portrait of God. The one that had been put before me made no sense to me.

Another portrait of God began to gradually emerge. Perhaps it was the result of reading or spiritual and philosophical reflection or life experience, but sometime in my early 20's I began to perceive something entirely different. God need not be understood as condemnation, anger, violence and eternal damnation. God can be drawn differently.

I began to perceive the inverse of the portrait of deity that had been painted in my youth, a gracious God, one who provides the tools necessary for making the world a better place...for every person. This new picture displayed a God who equipped, empowered and enabled, who trusted God's children to utilize the gifts that are given in order to live in healthy and productive ways. This was not a God of division but of unity. This was not a God of anger but kindness. This was not a God of retribution but forgiveness and mercy.

By the time I reached seminary, my theology was fully invested in the inverse of the traditional portrait that I had been shown. What I learned there supported the alternative picture of the God of Jesus Christ. (By the way, I think that this dichotomy exists in all religions. It has little to do with God and a great deal more to do with power, manipulation and control of religious authorities.) I determined then that I would commit myself to a vocation of drawing this alternative vision of God for others.

The ministry of following a gracious God is, ironically, more difficult than a ministry that projects a God of rules, regulations and morals. A Gracious God calls us to be primarily concerned with others, while the legalistic God requires only that I be right with the laws. I have since discovered that it is difficult indeed to unlearn the legalistic, angry God that, apparently, many of us were taught. It is difficult in the extreme to allow persons to believe themselves equipped and empowered for ministry that reflects a gracious deity.

While appropriate words may allude us, and while pedagogy fails us, I hope that all who read The Shiloh Insider will be moved to live into faithfulness to the deity drawn for us in the gracious and merciful acts of Jesus Christ. We are not a completed portrait of a church that lives from the image of a gracious God, but we are working at it. I hope that you will join us.